Pokémon Colosseum/XD: Gale of Darkness

Let's face it, all of us loved both of these games on the Gamecube. Going through the entirely new Orre region, double battling, and snagging and purifying Shadow Pokemon from other trainers, these games certainly kept me entertained for several years, and I believe that they did the same for many of you.

Some discussion questions:

What shadow Pokemon did you choose to include on your team? While there weren't a whole lot of Pokemon to choose from, I still found it entertaining to use different teams each team for both games, especially choosing which Eeveelution to get in XD(Espeon was always the best).

What are your favorite parts and memories of the games? Both Colosseum and XD had a very big story on shadow Pokemon being used by evil criminal organizations. Along the way many memorable moments had occurred, so what are some of your favorite of these?

Possibility of a sequel? Do you think that there will be a sequel for these games, maybe even on the WiiU? Discuss what you think will happen and some of your theories on what it will be like if it were to exist.

So go ahead, discuss among your fellow Smogoners, and remember, have fun!
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NU Co-Leader

My favourite memory of XD was when I decided to Nuzlocke it. I had already played through it five times since it is my favourite Pokemon game, since I find the gameplay way better than the handhelds.

During this Nuzlocke I bonded with a Pokemon I got from a Pokespot. I caught a Hoppip. This Hoppip lasted for a long part of the game, but ultimately fell to a team-up on a sleep powder miss. The loss of Jumpluff(she evolved) devastated me and made me step away from the Nuzlocke run for a few days. I did eventually power through and complete it with a few casualties. This is my favourite memory since it took a hard game and made it even harder.

Every time I played through I would use different shadow pokemon. I've used Baltoy / Ledyba /Gulpin / Lunatone etc... The pokemon you would neglect in a regular run but since they're available and actually good I found them to be worth it.

And oh god if theres a sequel I'd play it, I would get it as soon as it came out and finish it within a day. Well probably not since I would have to completely every part of the game but yeah. It's a great series annd I hope they continue with it, and double battles are much more intense then boring old single battles.

I loved the idea of both games and the fact that your choices of Pokemon were limited. I also liked having to catch Pokemon from evil trainers... that was quite interesting. Everything being double battles was a nice mix-up as well. I'd love to see a sequel of it that includes the Sinnoh and Unova Pokemon.

I think there should have been more emphasis on the Colosseum's in both games. You didn't have to participate in many of them and there weren't many bonuses to participating in them after you've beaten them.

If a sequel is made, I'd love to see more emphasis on the Colosseum's. Maybe some triples battles would be added to the mix as well? It'd also be nice if the shadow Pokemon moves were more competitive. Most of the exclusive moves were awful. Heal Bell however was pretty useful. The exclusive moves had a bit of an effect on the current NU meta; Ampharos, Altaria, and Lapras wouldn't be able to use Heal Bell without it, which are fairly common moves on all of those Pokemon. (Especially Altaria.) Baton Pass Lunatone, Solrock, and Hypno was nice as well, although all 3 of those aren't common in any meta.

I love Gale of Darkness. I actually just bought it again last week. I usually pick Espeon when it comes to the Eevee evolution, but I've never tried Vaporeon. I think I will for this run.

My favorite part of the game was in the final area before you fought Shadow Lugia where you had to fight the leaders two sons. The guy with the Shadow Salamence was so bad ass. I was so happy when I caught it.

NU Co-Leader

I always thought those two guys looked way to young to be Greevil's sons. Though I did find the story between them interesting. And I must not have been the only one to think they were good guys when they first showed up? Right??

Another thing I liked about this series is Mt Battle. I had a lot of fun beating it, even if it took me forever. Mt Battle was also among my favourite experiences in the series

XD was definitely easier than Colosseum. Enemies leveled more gradually in XD than they did in Colosseum, which made the game less difficult. In addition to this, you would have less Pokemon purified in Colosseum than in XD, as the Purification Chamber was only introduced in XD.

Oh yeah, I am the only one who thought XD was easier compared to Colosseum?

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You're not alone. I also think Colosseum was more difficult, due to the sheer level creep of that game in comparison to that of XD's.
Overall, I'd say XD is the better game, despite Colosseum's nostalgia factor, (8 years strong!) because of the cutscenes (particularly the last one,) and because of how much less of a hassle it is to purify Shadow Pokemon in XD.
In my opinion, the best Eeveelution to use is Jolteon because of its blinding Speed, good neutral type coverage between Bite and Thundershock/Shock Wave, and access to Thunder Wave.
Pokemon that I often find myself using in Colosseum (not counting Espy and Umby) are Quilava, Quagsire, Flaafy, and either Meditite or Swablu. I usually don't bother with any Pokemon after Miror B. For XD, Teddiursa's almost a given, and other Pokes that I commonly use include Spheal, Houndour, Numel, (one or the other) Ralts, and Shroomish/Hoppip.

While snagging Dakim's Entei was hell, it's my personal opinion that it was nothing compared to Greevil's 7 snags in a row. Especially if you want a nice Lugia.

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I just hate not doing it on my first go so all four times I've played through the game I did all seven snags in a row without resetting. I don't know how long it actually takes but it feels like around an hour. XD

NU Co-Leader

What I did for Nuzlocking XD was as follows:
I made a list of every area that I could get a Pokemon in and wrote down every pokemon obtainable in each one. And when I entered each area I used a RNG to choose which Pokemon in the area I would get. Or in the case of Pokespots just the first one to arrive at each one if your Pokemon for that area.

It combines the difficulty of a regular run through XD, which is already difficult with a Nuzlocke run. It is a very interesting way to play through the game and definitely more exciting than your average run

I've wanted XD for the longest time... but I was stuck with Pokemon Colosseum D:

However, I really enjoyed Colosseum, it was the first Pokemon game that introduced 3-D graphics, and I always enjoyed the battles. I remember playing it the first few times and not being able to beat the last few people in the game, as my team was always too weak -.-

But then I learned about competitive Pokemon and oh dear.... I still can't count the number of times I reset for a good nature on a certain Pokemon, and good IVs, oh god... so much of my life wasted lol...

But seriously, Colosseum was probably one of the best of the Pokemon spin-offs.

Moderator

Colosseum was an awesome game, I must say. At least, the concept was. The limited number of (rather poor) Pokémon hampered the game somewhat. But oh, what an atmosphere. The Orre region, previously prosperous due to the mining industry, was quite a place. You had Pyrite Town, fallen into disrepair after the mines ran empty. After the companies left, The Under fell prey to criminal gangs. Somewhere out in the desert, a locomotive stopped one day and never moved again. Later on, some businessman made a café there.
Nowadays, the Mafia controls everything. Nobody else care to enforce law and order in Orre. There is a police station in Pyrite, but the sheriff can't even keep criminals off his own main street. Orre has no export or import, no trade to speak of.

Lacking anything resembling an online guide, and English not being my first language, it took me ages to figure out how to purify the Shadow Pokémon. I also got stuck in Pyrite for a long, long time, because I didn't see the entrance to Pyrite Cave. However, this made it even sweeter when I finally figured it out.

Then you have the characters. Boy, the characters. Miror B. Miracle B. Lady Venus. The Kids Grid. Nascour and Evice. Duking. These guys had personality in spades, and they fit perfectly into the grim atmosphere of Orre.
The locations, oh, the locations. Phenac City and Agate Village were calm oases in the rough desert. Law, order and technology existed to some degree here, sheltered from the outside world.
The Under was the single most atmospheric place in all of Pokémon, rivalled only by the town on the surface. I was gutted to find out that this place was blocked off in XD.
Realgam Tower mirrors many Easter-European casinos or hotels built by mafia money. Luxury everywhere, but not a lightbulb is paid for by money acquired through legal and ethical means.
The bombed Snagem lair is also an interesting place. The attention to detail is stunning.

Last, the Mt. Battle challenge. Oh, how I raged when I got to lvl. 97 one day, I had 40 continues left, and then I had to turn off the GameCube after losing a few times. The challenge was set up so that you could only save after you had won a game, and if you quit at ANY other point, you lose your progress.

And then XD came. Oh, what a game. Minus the Under, it had everything Colosseum had, but more. It added wild Pokémon. The Pokémon you could snag were actually good this time. Special moves. More "safe" locations, hinting at a brighter future for poor, grim Orre. Chobin. The cozy Lab, which I've felt more at home in than any town in any other Pokémon game. Gateon Port, with Krabby Club. And no annoying girl following your every step. Plus the ultra-challenging Orre Colosseum.

Awesome games. Ever since I purified Shadow Lugia, I've been waiting for a sequel.

Possibility of a sequel? Do you think that there will be a sequel for these games, maybe even on the WiiU? Discuss what you think will happen and some of your theories on what it will be like if it were to exist.

Yeah, these games really need a sequel, as every aspect of playing through them was so great. Mount Battle was so awesome, as the diversity of each of the battles proved to be a challenge. A sequel in any form would be very appreciated, I don't care how much it would cost, I would buy it as soon as it came out.

Orange Islands

I can say I have the MATTLE HoOh from completing the whole of the Mount Battle Challenge. Was a great day when I finally did it using my Ingame team. Raikou, Feraligtr, Entei, Espeon, Umbreon and Hariyama.

Rain Dance + Thunder/Surf spam works wonders in doubles in Gen 3 :)

I found XD to be a lot easier until the final area, there is a pretty big level jump. Not sure which I enjoyed more... pretty sure I still have both of them. Might play through them again over the summer :) It feels really strange going back to Gen 3 now from Gen 5 without all the physical/special split etc...

These games were great. Going through Mt. Battle in one sitting when I was younger was a test of endurance.

XD: Shadow Pokes I used were Houndour, Spheal, Mareep, Primeape, and Dodrio. I always chose Espeon for my Eeveelution, although several times I wanted to try Vaporeon or Jolteon but Espeon was too awesome.

Miror B. was always one of the highlights of these games. He's such a fun character. In general I disliked the purification, as it just took too damn long. But the shadow Pokemon themselves were really cool, especially in XD with different attacks with effects for different types.

I'd love for a sequel to these games on the WiiU, and I really hope they go back to the story-mode console games because Battle Revolution sucked imo. Maybe there don't have to be shadow Pokemon but they should certainly have another installment akin to these games. These games were like Final Fantasy clones for Pokemon, and that was an enjoyable experience for me.

Shadow Boosts seem to be just a level boost as implied by the game (ie. lv 34+), rather than a seemingly random set stat increase. When I was looking at Hypno I've noticed that the actual stats always match the stats that it would have at level 37 for the given IVs/Nature even though it's actually at level 34.

Now if I had only thought to check by level earlier... I had only thought about it when I saw that Natu's boost was really low because it had a -Speed nature and a very low Speed IV. Anyways I will post the level boosts as I go:

Example - Say you encounter Lugia and it has hex-flawless IVs and is Timid nature. It's level boost is +3 so calculating the stats for level 53 yields stats of 191/104/159/116/184/151 for when you're battling against it, but when you capture it the stats would be 181/99/150/110/174/143.

To check the boosts yourself it is pretty much the same method as before. You would catch a pokemon when it speed ties one of yours so you know the exact speed it has. Then figure out the exact speed IV. Then figure out what level it would have to be to have the speed it had given the speed IV and nature and subtract the level it actually was to find the boost.

Turns out that some of Greevil's pokemon DO have a shadow boost. Just not the Kanto birds.

I would really like other people to test these as well as I would like to know if these level boosts are always the same across other files. Some of my results lead me to believing that the boosts are always the same for each pokemon.

Here are all the enemy sets in Orre Colosseum in XD. Item, nature, IVs, EVs, and stats at level 50 and 100 are listed, as well as the moveset and ability. Note that any Pokémon that was listed in the strategy guide as having no item actually has an item.

Would be a good idea to save the info as a .txt file, then import into Excel using | as the delimiter.

Something amusing that I noticed is that all of the Pokémon that Ardos has have 0 happiness, except for Tauros. Perhaps they should have given it 0 happiness and Frustration over Return...

To put it straight, XD is more than my favorite pokemon game. Colosseum might have been, but I've bought it four times and every one of them have broke! I started putting them on velvet to make sure it's soft and it still broke! Sigh... Anyway, onto XD.
Am I the only one who found Snattle in phenac city hard? But anyway, XD was just like colosseum, but with leaps and bounds in the right direction. 9 wild pokemon, but the story just seemed more advanced. In colosseum, you were a trainer from, actually, you don't know where he's from, that joined team snagem. A year or so later he betrayed team snagem for the snag machine and took it by his own morals, or I don't know, he wanted do undo all of the work team snagem had done because Gonzap's wife stopped having an affair with him, we don't get much backstory... Anyway, he found a girl struggling in a body-bag (as you do) and saved her himself rather than calling the police (as you do) to find out that she has super-human powers that lets her see shadowy auras around shadow pokemon (as you do)! And then from there it's very much the same thing, except with not as many cut-scenes as XD and harder battles!
In XD, however, you're a teenager I think who is somehow amazing at battling and who lives at a laboratory preparing for the second shadow pokemon take-over if it were to happen again. It did, and just before the professor leading the main project to find a faster way of purifying shadow pokemon was kidnapped by cipher, he gave you the snag machine. (Lucky!) Again, instead of calling the authorities, like a sane person would do, you run around trying to find some information on where he might be and as a 13 to 15 year old boy you single-handedly take down a whole laboratory full of criminals. Works out quite well! XD Anyway, there are some more great cut-scenes and awesome battles when at the end they try to put emotion into pokemon!!! I have to say, I didn't cry, but they put it in pretty damn well!
Anyway, onto the questions:What shadow Pokemon did you choose to include on your team?
I included several pokemon, one run I used the pokemon from the blusix, resix whatever people, but some of them weren't good enough, so in late game I replaced one with Altaria and I picked numel instead of houndoor in early game because I don't like houndour, and I love numel! XD Anyway, I put a rate my team on supercheat (this was before I'd heard about smogon) so you can rate it too if you want, not that dragonbreath on Altaria is until I get dragonrush from orre colo (at least it was but I got fed up and have started another game, which is in progress right now!)
Claydol
Psychic, shadow ball, explosion, protect.

What are your favorite parts and memories of the games?
This one is tough... I really don't know, but I suppose the aforementioned cut-scene at the end of XD, it truly was incredible! XD

Possibility of a sequel?

I thought about this a while back and I would of course buy it, but if they are going to make a sequel then they really should have done it for the wii, so I'm wandering if it could happen... I have to say though, in one interview that was in ONM (official nintendo magazine) it said that XD wasn't meant to be a sequel to colosseum. Who else here thinks that is BS, especially how it actually TALKS ABOUT Colosseum in XD!!!

Moderator

^I don't think calling the authorities would have done any big difference anyway. Orre is practically lawless; there is one town with a sheriff, and even that one is chock-full of thugs and criminals. It seems like a former corporate-controlled region, where the corporations stopped caring and left after the mines were dug empty.

I can say I have the MATTLE HoOh from completing the whole of the Mount Battle Challenge.

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Getting that Ho-oH was definitely the most satisfying thing I have achieved in a Pokemon game. I remember shaking after beating mount battle, half worried that it wouldn't work and there would be no Ho-oH, but fortunately all was well =)

The best part of Colosseum for me was the battle animations, I thought they were so bad ass at the time. I did not particularly care for how long they made you weight until you could trade with the gameboy advance games and the purification process was a pain in the butt.